The Turkey M7.2 earthquake turned out to be a really desastrous event. More than 500 people died, more than 2,000 houses were destroyed. Currently, international aid is reaching the epicentral area. Chris Rowan has a good article on the geological background (an earlier one here), History of Geology discusses the paleoseismicity of that region. The German Aerospace Agency (DLR) prepared some quick response maps for the Van and Ercis areas. Nice work!
Update: According to a press release from Bogazici University, intensities reached VIII. They also claim a depth of 5 km only. 138 people died, 350 were wounded and 970 buildings collapsed.
An earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 7.2 (EMSC: Mw 7.3) occured in Eastern Tureky in a depth of 10 – 20 km. The epicentre was situated close to the city of Van. More than 30 houses collapsed according to first reports. Despite only several dozens of people have been confirmed dead until now, the earthquake could have caused hundreds of fatalities. Surprisingly, the quake did neither happen at the North Anatolian Fault Zone nor at the East Anatolian Fault Zone. Those two strike slip systems are considered as the most dangerous faults in Turkey. The Van area lies in a broad zone of convergent movement of the Arabian plate vs. Eurasia, and mapped faults are in concordance with the oblique thrust mechanism observed at the 23 October 2011 event. Convergence rate is in the order of 25 mm/a there. more
Let’s start with some good news: The first two Galileo satellites (Natalia and Thijs) will be launched today from Kourou. It’s a little behind the schedule (6 years) and the entire project has become a little more expensive than previously thought (1,600,000,000 €), but who cares? It will provide 1 m GPS resolution! 1 m!!!
There is one more Archaeopteryx! Really! Soemone who does not want his name to be told handed out the fossil to scientists. After a thoroughly investigation of that great piece of Solnhofen Plattenkalk, the anonymous collector will get back his bird. No, his dinosaur I mean. Ehm, his Archaeopteryx.
Dave Petley reported on a giant landslide in Iceland. It’s expected to have ~1,000,000 m³. See the amazing images, just great.
Dear participants,
hopefully, everybody has returned well and everybody enjoyed the meeting,
we have received a lot of mails and the feedback is fantastic. THANK YOU!
The updated abstract volume will be ready for download soon. You will receive an extra mail with the link or can just visit paleoseismicity.org.
Based on a new inversion of InSAR data, De Natale et al. predicted that the Avezzano and Sulmona tectonic domains, in Central Italy, may anticipate by 15-20 yr the next large earthquake, as a result of stress transfer. Avezzano and Sulmona were razed by a large earthquake in 1915 and 1706, respectively.
Giuseppe De Natale, Bruno Crippa, Claudia Troise and Folco Pingue. Abruzzo, Italy, Earthquakes of April 2009: Heterogeneous Fault-Slip Models and Stress Transfer from Accurate Inversion of ENVISAT-InSAR Data. Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 101(5), 2340-2354, 2011. DOI: 10.1785/0120100220.
9:00 The second day started with a great keynote, Chris Scholz talked about earthquake triggering and fault synchronization with examples from California and Iceland.
09:45 Next great keynote: Clark Burchfiel on the Wenchuan EQ!
After the arrival (thanks to Christoph for the shuttle!) and a very nice opening dinner yesterday the first key note lectures have been held this morning.
Dimitrios Papanikolaou introduced the Hellenic Arc system and talked about plate scale-geometries and active movements.
Poster session 1: Tom Rockwell in front of his poster (Tsang et al.)
Jim McCalpin held a very interesting talk about using Lidar in dense forests in Alaska to detect neotectonic movements which surely would be a great method for Europe, too!
Eldon Gath presented a study dealing with three-dimensional fault rupture interpretation.
Right now it’s time for the first poster session. We’re directly at the beach, it’s almost 30°C, sunny and a smooth breeze chills our science-filled minds.
After the very successful 1st Workshop on Earthquake Archaeology and Paleoseismology held in the ancient roman site of Baelo Claudia (Spain, 2009), the INQUA Focus Group on Paleoseismology and Active Tectonics decided to elaborate a bi-annual calendar to support this joint initiative with the IGCP-567 “Earthquake Archaeology”. This second joint meeting moved to the eastern Mediterranean, a tectonically active setting within the Africa-Eurasia collision zone and located in the origins of the pioneer’s works on archaeoseismology. However, for the coming year 2012, at least a part of us will move also to the New World, where the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 international workshop will take place in Morelia, Mexico in November 2012. It is planned to proceed with the meeting, so we are thinking of Aachen, Germany, to be the host in 2013, possibly together with Louvain, Belgium.
The program of the upcoming 2nd INQUA – IGCP 567 International Workshop on Active Tectonics, Earthquake Geology, Archaeology and Engineering just released! Have a go!
19-24 September 2011 Corinth, Greece
A new paper published in Natural Hazards today discusses post-depositional changes of tsunamites. At sites in Thailand covered by sediments of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, Szczuciński (2011) has documented significant changes in the deposits over the last seven years. Not only were the tsunamites altered, eroded or re-deposited by animals and seasonal rain, but also vanished in certain cases.
Pa·le·o·seis·mic·i·ty [ pālē·ə·sīz·mĭs′ĭ·tē ] noun, plural -ties. Ancient earthquake activity.
Paleoseismicity.org is a page dedicated to scientists and everyone else interested in paleoseismology, archeoseismology, neotectonics, earthquake archeology, earthquake engineering and related topics. Different authors irregularly write about recent papers, field work, problems, conferences or just interesting things that they come across. We intend to provide a platform for discussion and scientific exchange. Interested in joining as an author? Please contact us!
paleoseismicity.org is edited by Christoph Grützner and administrated by Martin Schmidt, Koblenz/Germany
© 2008 - 2024 All rights reserved